7 August 2010

Scary things can happen when driving abroad

Another incident sent in by a reader as a warning.

"My husband and I recently returned from touring round Europe for the fifth year in a row. We had never experienced any problems before this year. We were driving from Brno to Bratislava via Babkov on the D1 E50 when an old Bmw came up behind us with five men inside. The driver started flashing the lights and coming really close to the back of our car, while his passengers were frantically pointing at the passenger side back wheel. We slowed down for a time but no way were we going to pull over as my husband is a mechanic and had checked the car before we left the hotel.

When they realised we had no intention of stopping they started to get quite frantic and were getting dangerously close. My husband started to go faster and pull away from them when the Mercedes in front of us started braking and weaving and we realised he was in on it as well. When the BMW started to fall behind the Mercedes pulled over onto the hard shoulder and we drove on as fast as possible.

We are convinced it was the car they were after as we have a Golf GT Sport. All their cars are either black or silver and ours stuck out like a sore thumb as it is red. We also hadn’t seen another Golf.

It was a really scary ten minutes driving at high speeds but it hasn’t put us off our driving holidays. We just won’t be back in Czechoslovakia and we would suggest if any of your readers are going please don’t go in a Golf."

I have been driving abroad for over 40 years and I'm happy to say I've never experienced any similar problems, so we are not saying you shouldn't take your car to Europe - and neither is the author of the above piece - simply be aware these things can happen. Luckily they are very much the exception.